feeling listless

Film Just watched The Shining for the first time (or rather finally) and amid my usual issues with Kubrick as a film maker (too long and extensive to go into at the moment) the real problem was I felt like I'd seen it before. Not because I'd forgotten, but because of the number of clips and parodies I'd seen in other films and television shows. I spent much of the time in a kind of backwards referencing stupor, recognising moments I'd seen before in places like Spaced, The League of Gentlemen and The Simpsons.

Yet there were still enough moments to keep me fairly creeped out but again these had little to do with the plot. I can't imagine how long this film took to be made, but Shelley Duvall is either a tremendous actress or they really dragged the humanity out of her. In the shots were she drags her feet through the corridors she's hardly holding onto that kitchen knife, as though it isn't in her hand at all, almost hover a few millimetres away. Had the trainers of the horse Red Rum seen this film and was that another massive film reference? And to be honest it's a shame I know that all of those extra-ordinary tracking shots were accomplished using a steadycam. Such things would surely have been hidden from the audience at the time, and if nothing else I would have spent half the time trying to work out how the crane or tracks passed under the doorways or around the corners. I mean why has no one throught to turn the shots of the little boy on the tricycle into a racing game for the Playstation?